Sources: PHI DELTA KAPPAN; Date: May
1993, Title: "Perspective on Education In America,"* Author: Robert
M. Huelskamp; THE EDUCATION DIGEST, Date: September 1993, Title: "The Second
Coming of the Sandia Report," reprinted from Phi Delta Kappan; U.S. NEWS
& WORLD REPORT, Date: 10/18/93, Title: "School choice: Its time has come,"
Author: Michael Barone

SYNOPSIS: One of the most thorough investigations into public
education did not produce the expected results and instead, ended up
being censored.

When state governors and President George Bush set national
education goals after the 1989 education summit, the administration charged Sandia
National Laboratories, a scientific research organization, with investigating
the state of public education.

In 1991, Sandia presented its first findings to the U.S. Department
of Education and the National Science Foundation. While the response
from these government agencies should have been one of some celebration,
instead it was one of silence -- a silence compounded by the national
media. The results did not reveal a seriously deficient educational
system in dire need of profound changes such as a nationwide voucher
program. And the report was suppressed.

Briefly,
the Sandia Report did find the following: on nearly every measure employed in
the survey, a steady or slightly improving trend was identified in public education.
Overall, the high school completion rate in the U.S. at 85 percent ranks as one
of the highest in the world. The dropout rate is inflated by a growing immigrant
school population. SAT results often reported as falling do so not because of
decreasing student performance but because of increased participation from students
in the lower percentiles, a factor not always found when comparing results to
other countries. One quarter of young people will achieve a bachelor's degree.
Spending on education, often characterized as out of control, has risen by 30
percent but this has gone into special education programs, not the "regular"
classroom.

Areas of concern raised by the report focused on the performance
of minorities who were still lagging behind whites. Also, it suggested that a
cycle of low esteem among educators posed a threat to future educational progress.
And a lack of training in the workplace, compared to countries such as Japan and
Germany, threatens productivity.

Given the range and insights that the Sandia
Report produced, it was remarkable this information did not form the basis for
the 1992 education debate. The lack of coverage of the report, and the rancor
with which the report was met from government departments and, more importantly,
from the "Education President," George Bush, was astounding. Clearly,
the findings of the report contradicted the political philosophy of "deregulating"
public education and would have seriously weakened the "choice movement."
The fact that eight of the 10 Nobel winners announced this year in economics,
medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature were Americans similarly failed to
give the anti-public school group much ammunition.

The Sandia Report is
so threatening to the anti-public-school lobby that those supporting school choice
initiatives still refuse to acknowledge its existence. In an impassioned plea
for "school choice," published in US News & World Report, writer
Michael Barone cites the 1983 "Nation at Risk" Report while ignoring
the more recent Sandia Report.

While the appeal by Sandia researcher Robert
M. Huelskamp for a "Second Coming of the Sandia Report" may be ignored,
the deliberate withholding of the Sandia Report for political ends surely deserves
the public's attention.

SSU Censored Researcher: Gerald Austin

COMMENTS: Given the reception Project Censored received when
we contacted Sandia National Laboratories for follow-up information
(as we do with all original sources), we are hardly surprised that the
media have not given the Sandia study more coverage. At best, we can
say that Sandia doesn't want to discuss the study in any way.

When
we contacted Bob Huelskamp, author of the Phi Delta Kappan article, he said that
Sandia was not interested in replying to our questionnaire and that all further
inquiries should be directed to a public information official by the name of Al
Stotts.

When Mr. Stotts didn't return our call of December 13, we tried
again on the 16th and were told that he was on vacation until after New Year's
day. But we were told to contact Jerry Langheim who would be able to help us.
As it turned out, Mr. Langheim was out ill and wouldn't be back until after the
first of the new year. But we were told to contact Rod Geer who would be able
to help us.

We were finally able to reach Mr. Geer on December 17.

When
I explained the Project to Geer, he responded, "We're not going to fill out
the form and send it back to you.... It was published in the Phi Delta Kappan...and
we consider ourselves finished with that business."

Geer then went
into some background on how the study came about. In brief, he said that the report
did not originate from a Department of Energy grant to do a study on education
in America, but was primarily an in-house effort to help Sandia improve its own
educational outreach. Geer suggested that the media had overblown the importance
of the study.

When it became obvious that Geer was not going to comment further on
the study -- "The study now has been published in the Kappan and
that finished it." -- we asked whether this indicated that Sandia
is repudiating the results of its study.

Geer said, "We continue to support what the
article says."

After further non-productive jousting, Geer said it
was "fine" for us to reprint the Kappan article; thus it appears in
Appendix D.

Given the potential significance of the Sandia study in terms
of a national debate on educational policy, one has to wonder why the study is
being handled so delicately by Sandia personnel. Regardless of what Geer says,
the research study was performed at Sandia National Laboratories and was supported
by taxpayer dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy. It would appear that there
is still more to this story deserving of media attention.